


Desolate Freedom

by Lillian_Sunshine



Category: Historical RPF, Lewis & Clark
Genre: Grief/Mourning, I couldn't bring myself to make George Rogers Clark particularly homophobic, I mean Lewis is already dead at the beginning of this, I mean the dude was never married or engaged, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, but it could be way worse guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 07:08:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian_Sunshine/pseuds/Lillian_Sunshine
Summary: If you read my works then you probably already know that on October 11, 1809 Meriwether Lewis killed himself. A few weeks before doing so he sent a letter to his dear friend William Clark, the contents of which caused Clark to write "I fear, Oh I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him, what will be the consequence." This is a story about grief, as seen through the eyes of his older brother George Rogers Clark .





	Desolate Freedom

It took me far too long to notice my brother. He was a babe in arms when I left for Kentucky and I confess in those wild days family of any sort was rather far from my mind. The frontier demanded all of my attention. During the war what little time I had left after worrying about my own neck and my own measures of success was spent worrying after my other brothers facing combat. William was a nonentity, a bright face with unruly red hair to which I attached no sentiment other than the vague label of home. I only saw him when I could get away to Virginia on visits, which wasn’t often. The clearest memory I have of Bill from those years is a quiet child at the dinner table, sneaking awed glances at me while I boasted of my exploits.

I was arrogant during those days and I supposed it was only natural for the brother of a national hero to show such deference. I admit I considered a benevolent smile and a tousle of his hair to be quite the extent of my brotherly duties.

Those were the days when I drank because I was happy and never supposed it would be any different. The future was bright and the success I enjoyed surely meant I was to be the stuff of legends for the rest of my life. To catch my eye you had to look up to me, I would not suffer myself to look down. 

It’s a lucky thing my brother never held himself to a similar standard. But you know my story. The creditors came and I crumbled. The country that had risen me to greatness bucked me off just as easily and you can be assured that I appreciated the irony. The money owed to me from my wartime expenditures was never repaid and I retreated to the Ohio Valley. Who knows what would be left of me today if my family had not followed me there. 

And so the first real memory I have of my brother is his face looking down at me.

***

“Fanny and I wanted to get you to bed.” he said, sitting with his back against the front of the the farmhouse. “But Mother forbade it.”

“Mphmf,” I said and rolled over. I had apparently spend the night face down on our little porch, and my back was not pleased. The evening came back to me. I had moved in with my parents onto their new farm only a few days ago. 

My head throbbed but I was used to it. Morning afters were never so bad anymore. I opened one eye and smiled conspiratorially. A wretch I may have been but there was still enough life left in me to pretend for my kid brother. “Hmm is she terribly cross?”

He smiled, and it struck me that the child I knew was nearly gone. He was 14 years old, and I really didn’t know when his legs had gotten so long and his stature so lean. He was practically a stranger, just a bit of boyishness remained in his face. “Oh Terribly. Her exact words when I came out were “Tell him to come in when he’d like to have breakfast and a good thrashing.” 

I sat up. “It’s good to be home.”

“Perhaps you ought to recapture this fort,” Bill said. “It has fallen into villainous hands.”

He meant well but my smile dampened. That had been a great day, a glorious day but it was a very long time ago and it seemed rather hollow. “Ah but where is the frozen river I must cross?”

“Nevermind that,” Bill said, his eyes lighting up, “For the foe you’ll have to fight is much worse than any British soldier or Indian brave.”

“Truer words were never spoken. Why if they had only let her Mother could’ve ended the war years early simply by giving King George a good whack on the head!”

“He’d fall down dead right away!” Bill said laughing and the sight of it restored me a little. 

“I suppose I do deserve a thrashing.” I said. I was a 32 year old man. This sort of behavior, on my parents doorstep no less, was shameful. “I was a jackass wasn’t I?”

“You were mostly just loud. Mother made Fanny and I stay upstairs but we watched out the window. You were talking about getting back what you were owed.” He gave me a look. “You sounded pretty confident, but mother wouldn’t let you come in.

“Ah well,” I said scratching the back of my neck. “Men in their cups often sound confident but it usually amounts to nothing.”

He schooled his expression well. “No matter,” he said shrugging. “You’ll get it back somehow.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

“You’re George Rogers Clark. The Conqueror of the Northwest will figure it out.”

I was pretty sure this was the longest conversation we had ever had. His memories of me were one part real and nine part legends and stories. The easy faith in his voice was only natural. Through the years and through all the sleepless nights he must have doubted. My brother’s too smart not to. But the incredible thing about Bill is every time he’s told me it would be alright, his mouth curves up into the same smile, and his eyes have the exact same easy faith. As if all the years of my wrongs mean nothing to him

And every time, I believe him.

***

After that, my brother and I were friends. Bill’s natural propensity for filtering poor emotions through himself quickly and his adaptable spirit meant he was happy in this new setting, however, I mourned the lack of opportunity for him most bitterly. 

The frontier had been my life for quite some time, but first I had had the chance to receive schooling, and I thought it rather hard for someone with as apt a mind as Bill to go without it. I did what I could to remedy this, teaching him what I remembered about histories and the natural sciences, which had always rather fascinated me. I felt my inadequacy in this respect terribly, Bill would often ask a question on the subject at hand which my knowledge was insufficient to answer. He would shrug it off with an “ah well” and continue on with whatever work he was doing, faster, as if that would help us both forget the question. It frustrated me. My brother has always contented himself with what he has, has always taken care of the business at hand whether that means running the farm, negotiating an Indian treaty, or taking care of the nitwits in his life, be it me or that fellow Lewis. He’s quite good at it, but I’ve never forgotten that he has the capacity to ask the hard questions and the desire to understand. How often I’ve wondered what his life might have been like if I was able to answer all his questions, or better yet, place him in a community of people that could. Instead, I was one of those that pulled him away from that understanding and that stimulation. Now I think I would have the good sense to let him be, but back when I was doing the calling I simply couldn’t help it. I thought perhaps I still could be saved.

That’s why I can’t fault Meriwether Lewis too much. I always knew that he needed my brother far more than my brother needed him, I could see it in his face when I hosted them at my house all those years ago before my brother’s fame eclipsed my own. I was wary of it, worried about how such a burden would hurt him. But of course I recognized the need in the young man’s eyes, could very well identify it in my own. It wasn’t my place to judge him, certainly not until I could say I had relinquished my claims on my brother’s soul. And besides, it’s not as if Bill had no autonomy in the matter. He chose to answer our calls.

***

I watched my brother’s carriage pull up from the window of my bedroom. That was about all I could do, watch. I do believe that is to be my fate for the rest of my life, as a one legged, half paralyzed pauper what else is left to me? But ah, I am more accustomed to it now, and when my brother came to call the stroke was fresh and the loss of all my hopes had not yet settled deep in my chest.

We had of course heard of Governor Lewis’ demise on the Natchez Trail. The papers had been at the story as hyenas to a carcass. When my brother first walked through the door I instantly knew that he had as well. He was all smiles when he came in, shaking our brother-in-law’s hand, hugging Lucy, lifting up the children. His wife was close behind, holding my nephew, and Lucy made a point of fussing over her. I suppose if you truly didn’t know Bill you could’ve thought he was happy, but it was a rather poor facsimile. When my brother is happy his whole body shows it. His face flushes, his eyes shine, every moment exudes joy. It’s musical. 

His eyes were worn now, and his skin pale. This would not be the pleasurable visit either of us had hoped for, but I was still immeasurably glad he was here. Lord it had been an age. 

His gaze reached mine and I was honored to see some little thing of happiness bloom inside him. He made as if to bend over and hug me but I waved him off.

“I can still stand for my baby brother,” I said, forcing my body to my will. I was rather lopsided, and my good arm gripped the table for dear life, but still I stood.

“Oh George I wish you wouldn’t,” I heard Lucy say in the background.

Bill showed no adverse reaction to my condition, not even so much a head cock at the horrid slurring that having half of my face limp and numb had produced in my speech. He only looked pleased to see me. His approach was careful at first, sensible of my fragility, but once his arms were around me he squeezed hard. “George!”

I have never hated being a cripple as much as I did in that moment. I couldn’t even hug my brother, I could barely lift up my right arm a few inches. “Bill!” 

He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my face. “Have you heard?”

“We have. I’m so sorry.” I faltered a bit and Bill helped me back into my chair. 

Just my acknowledgement of the incident made it impossible for my brother to keep on the pleasant veneer and his whole face shifted into unveiled misery Even I was taken aback by the depth of what I saw. Bill has always been so, oh words fail, Bill has always been Bill. Stable, steadfast, bright. Sorrow was for Meriwether Lewis and I. It was just unnatural on my brother. Safely in my chair, my good arm shot out and grabbed his hand. 

He blinked, and looked at me again, and as quickly as the sorrow had come he banished it, replacing it with a dulled smile that looked like it pained him. “Look at the two of us,” Bill said with a laugh. “The crops will wither and die, for I do believe we’ve summoned every storm cloud in the state of Kentucky.”

Through all my sister’s condolences and dinner that night my brother kept that smile on, like grief was a light thing, a shallow cut. He talked about seeing to his friend’s journals and what a shame it all was, how terribly tragic. He asked Lucy to pass the potatoes. He didn’t forget to inquire into the health of the children and even talked some of his house in St. Louis. When he turned to me to ask of my difficulties with something of compassion in the back of his eyes I thought I might weep. His tone and gaze were the same as whenever he had had to come to my rescue, and it struck me for the first time that this in my brother was the unnatural. I had only thought it was the sorrow because that was what my brother never let me see. It was a lovely act, pretending nothing could throw him. It could cause tremendous healing. It had in me. It must have in Lewis as well. There’s nothing more comforting to people like us than to think there’s a being we can’t hurt. But I had seen that profound sorrow and it would not be unseen. I knew my brother’s secret. There was a price for the care he administered, one he paid in full, and far more often than I had realized.

***

Sleep didn’t come that night, so I was sitting in my chair, staring out at the moon when I heard the rapping. It was soft and tentative, like it was trying not to get noticed.

“Let yourself in,” I called. A few moments later Bill cracked the door open and poked his head  sheepishly out, the light from the candle in his hand casting shadows on the wall .

“I thought you’d be asleep.” 

“Well I’m not so why don’t you get that turtle head of yours in here anyhow?” Bill complied, shutting the door tightly behind him. “Pull up a chair, be comfortable.”

“Alright.”

“I wish I could offer you some scotch or whiskey but…”

“I know,” Bill said sitting down across from me. He gazed out the window. “This room has excellent lighting. I’m sure on a full moon you don’t even need candles.” He set his down on my bed stand.

“Lucy has been kind to me,” I said. “Everyone is always very kind.” My brother was nearly forty now and probably more of man than I had ever had a hope of becoming but right then, in that light, I saw little bit of the boy who used to steal furtive glances of me during dinner. It was a look I never thought I’d see again. “So what do you think of the new mug?” I said gesturing to my drooping features.

“It’s your face, and I’m just glad to be seeing it,” he said with the standard Bill conviction that makes you believe every word, no matter how nonsensical. He made me smile.

“Well you didn’t come here in the middle of the night just to stare at it,” I said with a wave of my hand. “So why are you here?”

“I- uh- I-,” He pursed his lips and reached into his pocket. “Here.” He placed a well creased letter into my hands. 

I glanced at the signature near the bottom. “Meriwether Lewis?”

“Yes,” My brother wouldn’t look at me. “Please, just, read it.” He clasped his hands together to keep them from shaking.

My brother was rarely so ill at ease and it was with some trepidation I turned my attention to the papers in my hand.  _ Dear Bill… _

_ Oh.  _

_ Oh no. _

“I didn’t realize how sick he was. This is-”

“Don’t say it.”

“Alright.” So he was one of those then. There were things you were supposed to say about deviants. Things you were supposed to think. But wasn’t it also true that no ill should be spoken of dead man who wasn’t there to defend himself? Lewis had loved my brother. Lewis had been ill. Now Lewis was dead.

“Does anyone else know about this?”

“Johnathan some. I received it at his house and he was anxious to know why I appeared so distressed. But I didn’t tell him everything, I don’t know that he would understand.” He looked up at me with his big doleful eyes. “You’re holding his legacy in your hands.”

“And what do you want to do with it?”

“I want to protect it,” Bill said. His eyes grew hard. “But I also wanted to tell you. I hope I can do both.” Gauging from his expression I think if I announced my intentions to publish the letter in newspapers nationwide I wouldn’t have survived the night. “Why are you grinning?”

“You, Bill, you,” I said. Lord it had been too long since I faced the calibre of my brother. “Your hands are still.” He looked at them as if he just realized. “I’m not interested in opposing you don’t worry.” He let out a breath. “What I am interested in is how you feel about all of this.”

“How do I feel about it?” His eyes fixated on a bed post. “I think it makes sense.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think it makes a lot of goddamn sense actually. Now that I know I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

“Did you…”

His eyes shot up. “No! I don’t know. Maybe.”

I gave him a look. 

“On the Pacific one night I think I could have,” Bill admitted. “But I don’t see how it matters now.”

“No I suppose it doesn’t.”

“George,” Bill said. “It sounded like Meriwether thought I despised him didn’t it?”

What could I say to my brother that wasn’t a lie? He broke my gaze abruptly, started to pace around the room.  “Oh God. Oh God he did, he thought I hated him. He- he killed himself thinking I hated him!” He was frantic. “I never gave him any cause to think that.” All the energy left him and he stood, shoulders so low his fingers might as well have dragged on the floor. “How could he think that?”

“Bill,” I said, reaching out with my good arm. “Come here.”

In an instant he did, kneeling at my chair so I could hunch myself over him. His head was in my chest. “You didn’t give him any cause,” I repeated as he sobbed. “You didn’t give him any cause.” It wasn’t hard for me to understand. It’s hard to imagine that someone like Bill loves you if you’re someone like Meriwether Lewis. He might make you believe it while he’s there, when he’s looking, and fussing, and loving. But then he’s gone you’re left with who you are without him and how the hell could anyone love who you are without him?

“He thought I was coming!” Bill moaned into my shirt. “His servant says he thought he heard me coming on!”

“Oh Bill how were you supposed to know?”

“No, you don’t understand!” He pulled himself out of my embrace and sat back on his knees. “He asked me to help sort his things out. I saw his apartment. It was horrible! There were bottles everywhere and he was in such a state I had not seen since-”  _ Since me little brother? _ “I had not seen in a very long time and I knew.” He said speaking the last two words with an ugly sort of emphasis. “Anyone could see he was unwell and I just let him go, with no one there to help him on. He was so anxious and so sick and so tired and what did I do but wave him goodbye and wish him a pleasant journey?”

“You had been planning this visit for months,” I said. “All of your arrangements were made, I’m sure he didn’t expect you to abandon all of that so you could go to Washington for no other purpose than as a what? A helpmate, a caretaker? That would have made Lewis feel terribly guilty.”

“I don’t care how bad he would’ve felt he would’ve been alive!” He shook his head. “I swear all of my compassion must have left me, else I would have gone with him.”

“Say you burst in that night, like some dashing hero, tore the gun from his hands in the nick of time, saved his life,” I said. “Who’s to say he wouldn’t have ended up like me?”

In a grotesquely brave display, my puffy eyed, snot-nosed, absolutely distraught brother contorted his face into some visage of concern. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Aw hell,” I dearly felt my mistake.  _ The one time he needs you and you make it about you. Again. _ “I just meant...”

“What could you possibly just mean?”

“Look at me!” I said, throwing my good arm up. “I’m a one legged half paralyzed invalid Bill. I’m going to have to live with my sister for the rest of my life. Even if I miraculously recovered the full use of my body and regrew a leg I still couldn’t afford to live alone. Every penny I have I’ve gotten from my siblings. I’m old and so far removed from my glories that it’s as if they never happened.”

“So what are you saying?”  _ Stop talking. Just stop talking. _

“I’m saying maybe everything would have worked out for the best if you had just stayed in the army.”

He shut his eyes and shook his head. “I left the army because my stomach didn’t agree with it.” 

“When in your entire life has your stomach agreed with you?” I demanded. “If you could travel thousands of miles into the sheer wilderness with that same stomach you could have stayed in the army. You don’t have to shield me like some child from the truth!”

“Maybe I did leave for you but we all worked together, Jonathan, Edmund and I. You were in bad way, we couldn’t just let you be!”

“You’re the only one who quit his career!” The time was past for changing the subject, now I needed to make him understand. “I needed Edmund’s money and Jonathan’s government petitions were most useful but you’re the one who dropped everything to come look after me. You’re the one who spend years traveling with that weak stomach of yours to go look into my land holding and see what could be salvaged from the creditors. You saved me Bill, you brought me back from the brink!”

“Am I supposed to apologize!”

“No!” I took a breath. At this rate we were liable to wake up the whole house. “No. I am. Because look at what I did with that. Look at what I made of the rest of my life. I burdened you and I never paid you back. Now any chance I had of doing that is gone. It could have been better, if I had, if I was,” I couldn’t finish the sentence, not with my brother’s eyes staring at me like that. “I mean I think things would have been better for everyone if I just wasn’t around these past few decades. Including me. Maybe it would have been the same for Lewis. Maybe he was just smarter than me.”

“This is unbelievable.” Bill shook his head and got up, moving to stare out the window. “You’re absolutely unbelievable.” He turned to me. “You think I’m burdened by you?”

“Aren’t you?”

“It’s just love George, Jesus! If Meriwether was a burden then I want my burden back! Who the hell would ever want to go unburdened?” There’s nothing I can say to that glare. “Sometimes I get angry and disappointed and sad, and sometimes I wish things were different for both of you it’s true. But I never once, never once preferred a world without either of you in it. Do you understand me?” What do you do with a brother like that? “This is life. Anything can happen. Fortunes can change at any moment, cutting it short is just ludicrously wasteful!”

“Bill you know a lot about a lot of things.” I said, my voice catching. “And you’re better than any of us, but you don’t understand demons.”

“Oh, I don’t understand demons?” 

“I don’t think you understand how it feels not to be able to be happy. I don’t think you understand what that does to a person. I don’t think you understand having all the choice and options of life and consistently choosing what will harm you because you know no other way to function.”

He took pity on me, and if that’s not the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard I call you a liar. But he did. His eyes softened and his face shifted. “I’m sorry that it’s like that George.” It wasn’t an apology it was a statement. “But you can’t tell me that life isn’t always worth fighting for. There’s always the possibility of better.”

“You’re right.” I said, because he was even if I didn’t feel that way at the moment. “It was an awful waste. But he’s at rest now. That’s all he was trying to get that night at the inn.”

“I’d like to smack him right up from that rest and drag him back here kicking and screaming. And I’d do the same for you do you hear?” He sighed. “‘He’s at rest.’ I don’t even know if that means anything anymore.”

“Of course it does!” I curled my hand into a fist and tried to fight back a rather strange and sudden tightness in my throat. “Of course it does! He was suffering and now he’s not!”

“The opposite of suffering is mirth.” Bill chewed his lip. “It seems to me that the “rest” of death is just some strange intermediary where nothing is felt at all.”

“Nothing is miles better than pain.”

“Even if the nothing is forever?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t accept that,” Bill said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I’m sorry George maybe I don’t understand but I just don’t accept that.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Look at this.” Bill said, turning back to the window. “Every star in the sky is out. Meriwether loved nights like this more than anything.” His voice was achy and tired. “He’s missing it.”

“Maybe there’s a night sky where he is. Maybe he’s looking down at it while we’re looking up.”

Bill laughed. “Meriwether would have turned his nose up at mysticism like that. But only in front of people. I think secretly he’d be pleased with the idea.”

He stayed like that for a long while and I resolved not to speak. When he finally came back to sit down, his grief was calmer and more focused. It would behave itself while Bill did what needed doing. “I don’t know about any of it, not really. I just know I have to see to what he left behind.” Gingerly he reached for the letter still in my lap. “What I do with this is how I start.”

“Burn it.” I said without hesitation. Bill clutched it a little tighter.

“It’s the last thing I’ll ever receive from him.”

“You said you wanted to protect his legacy. As long as that letter exists it’s in jeopardy.”

He looked at me sort of warily, like he thought I might try to grab it away from him, and then his gaze dropped to his hands. “Give me the candle.”

I reached over to my night table and grabbed it. “Here.”

He took the candle and walked to the cold fireplace, squatting down next to it. He closed his eyes, took the letter out, and I thought he would do it then, one fluid movement, like pulling a splinter. But his hand wavered over the fire and when he opened his eyes he yanked his hand back as if it was burned. 

The minutes went by and my brother sat back on his knees, letter pressed close to his face. He was almost completely turned away from me and I wasn’t at all I sure I wanted to see his expression. I was the interloping spectre and if I could have I would have left the room and let him be.

I heard the crumbling of paper and Bill hunched over himself, with the letter tight in between his hands. The noise ripped through the silence and some ancient instinct from my soldier days made my spine ramrod straight. The way he went down, it was if felled by a shot.

“Are you alright?!” I said gripping the armrests of my chair.

He raised himself and looked as if he were going to answer, but he had no sooner opened his mouth then he brought up his hand to cover it. After a brief glance at me he returned to the letter, tearing it first into halves, then quarters, then eighths and so on, until he had a small pile of scraps in front of him. 

Once he fed the first slip of paper to the candle flame his hesitation left him and he moved with the method of a machine albeit a defective one, the repetition becoming faster and faster, til I began to fear he would burn himself.

And then it was over and Governor Lewis’ letter was no more. Bill stood up, taking the candle with him. 

“Don’t you,” he said, looking rather ominous standing over me, “ _ Ever  _ make me do that again do you hear?”

“I won’t.” I promised. How could I when this night was etched on my bones? “I won’t ever make you do anything like this.”

Bill nodded. “Good.”

He stood there in limbo for a moment and then knelt down in front of me, and I hugged him, doing for the second time in one night what I had neglected to do for his entire life. 

“Thank you for being up.” 

I thought back on all I had said. There was much I wish I had done differently, but here he still was. Somehow I didn’t fuck it up too badly. “I’m glad I was.”

He disentangled himself. “I ought to get back to Julia.”

“Get some sleep Bill. We’ll have a proper visit in the morning.”

And so he went, leaving the room as if he was never there, save some new ashes in the fireplace and the imprint of a flame when I closed my eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> So this story could well have happened in real life. William Clark was visiting family in Kentucky when he heard about Lewis' death, and he really was with Johnathan when he received the letter. George Rogers Clark did go to live with his sister Lucy after his accident and remained with her until his death (he did eventually receive some money from the government, not enough to solve all his problems). The thing I cannot vouch for is when he moved in with Lucy. He had his stroke in 1809, and seeing as how Clark would've found out about Lewis's death in November, I thought it was most likely that GRC had already had his stroke, but my research didn't confirm this. The letter from Lewis to Clark is quite real, and most likely burned. Its contents are a mystery, and while I may guess at them as I did in this fic I will never write the actual letter. It's between Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.


End file.
